Cons:

MANY YEARS AGO, in a youth filled with escapades probably best forgotten, I had a regular gig in a wedding band. Despite what you might be thinking, these guys were really good, overqualified musicians with talents probably wasted on Celine Dion covers. Unchallenged by the material, we'd find ways to amuse ourselves, which is how we came to work the classic TV theme from SWAT into our repertoire. (You know, the one they butchered for the 2003 Colin Farrell flick?) Turned out to be a huge hit when introducing the bride and groom. Who knew?

The reason I bring this up is because that classic theme tune is one of the only things missing from SWAT 4, the new tactical shooter from Irrational Games. Focusing on close-quarters urban combat, the core gameplay provides the backdrop for for a variety of modes from single-player to co-op to multiplayer, all equally enjoyable. It's not the shiniest new game you'll find on the shelf, but it's definitely restored glory to the long-dormant SWAT franchise.

Too Close-Quarters For Comfort

SWAT 4 falls squarely in the "realism" camp of first-person shooters. The 14 single-player missions, mostly set in tight, indoor spaces, place you as a member of an elite five-man police squad, taking on high-risk warrant services, armed robberies gone bad and hostage rescues. Every mission has a series of objectives which usually involve your team sweeping from room to room, neutralizing threats and protecting innocents as you go.

To achieve these objectives, you're able to give orders to your team via an extremely elegant and effective command system. Place your crosshair on a door, right-click the mouse, and you'll get a menu of options like "move and clear" or "open, bang and breach." Move your crosshair over a neutralized suspect, and you'll get a "restrain" option that commands one of your teammates to cuff the perp. It's all extremely simple, and a tutorial mission is included to help make sense of some of the more complex commands.

In addition to your squadmates, it's possible to open a sniper view and take out enemies from a distance.

SWAT 4 also includes a number of special weapons and gadgets to aid your team as you go from room to room. The "optiwand" is one of the most important: a small video camera that you can snake under doors to see who's lurking on the other side. Depending on what you find, you might want to throw in a flashbang or gas grenade to momentarily incapacitate suspects. You'll find some doors are locked, giving you the option to either pick the lock or blow it open with a breaching shotgun or C4 charge. You can split your squad into two fireteams, and cameras mounted in each officer's helmet allow you to see what's happening in another part of the map, or even issue orders from afar.

Ultimately, the mechanic that sets SWAT 4 apart from other modern tactical shooters is its emphasis on tactics and procedure. Sure, you could shoot everything that moves, but a dead hostage -- by your hand or a suspect's -- results in an instant failure. You're given a grade at the end of each mission, and part of the job is yelling out for compliance, subduing suspects peacefully, collecting their weapons and reporting back as you go. There's a non-lethal shotgun, a taser gun (which is a riot to see in action), pepper spray and even a paintball gun available to stun enemies into submission. In many ways, it's a shooter that rewards you for not shooting, which adds tension as you go from room to room: is that suspect going to put that weapon down, or is he going to raise it and shoot? Deciding that moment when it's OK to fire is one of the things that gives SWAT 4 its unique charm.

Sadly, SWAT 4 doesn't contain an overarching narrative that ties all the missions together; it's more like a series of self-standing vignettes that move up in difficulty as you go from one to the next. The missions aren't without their charm, however -- each feels like a scene ripped from an action flick, whether it's a hostage situation at a dot-com, a robbery at a diamond vault, or you need to nab a wanted bad guy at an underground casino. To add replayability (and tension) to the missions, most of the bad guys respawn in random locations every time you play a map, which means you never know who might be lurking on the other side of a door: could be nobody, or could be three guys armed to the hilt.